The best year for movies? A new book makes the case for...

1of11THE MATRIX - Keanu Reeves. None. HOUCHRON CAPTION (01/04/2001): Topping Off 2000. End of year moneymakers give Hollywood a bit of box-office relief. HOUCHRON CAPTION (02/12/2002): What's wrong in this scene from The Matrix? A mistake was discovered by a careful movie watcher, who reported the finding at www.movie-mistakes.com/.Photo: WB

9of11LOA18:OSCAR:LOS ANGELES,CALIFORNIA,15FEB00 - UNDATED PUBLICITY PHOTOGRAPH - Actor Tom Cruise is shown in a scene from the film " Magnolia. " Cruise received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor February 15. The Academy Awards will be presented March 26 in Los Angeles. cfm/Photo by Peter Sorel/New Line Cinema REUTERS ALSO RAN 3/24/2000Photo: HO

11of11OSCARS08C-C-06JAN00-DD-HO--Al Pacino and Russell Crowe in THE INSIDER.

“One thing I learned from my farmer friends is that, every twenty years, you get a good harvest.”

That’s how veteran character actor Luis Guzman describes the batch of movies that came out in 1999. That quote appears in the prologue of “Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen,” author Brian Raftery’s entertainingly freewheeling rundown of the original, subversive and eventually influential films from that year.

Raftery practically had the inside dope on all these flicks since he was an intern at the time for Entertainment Weekly, a magazine that already had proclaimed that 1999 was a revolutionary year for film in a cover story that same year.

Cinematically speaking, it was a madcap 12 months. It began with multiplexes being inundated with about-teens-for-teens movies including “Varsity Blues,” “She’s All That” and “10 Things I Hate About You” and ended with major studios releasing ambitious (albeit commercially unsuccessful) features such as “Fight Club,” “The Insider” and “Magnolia.”

‘Best. Movie. Year. Ever.: How 1999 Blew Up the Big Screen’

By Brian Raftery

Simon & Schuster

416 pages, $28.99

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George Lucas returned to the sci-fi celluloid universe he created with the much anticipated (yet much derided) “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace,” and Stanley Kubrick virtually kept working and reworking “Eyes Wide Shut,” starring former A-list married couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, which came out after he passed away.

All those aforementioned films and others get extensive shout-outs in the book, complete with the actors and filmmakers giving their firsthand accounts. As Raftery tells it, it was go-for-broke time in Hollywood mainly because it was a go-for-broke time in the world.

Y2K (remember that?) made everyone worry that we would all revert to the Dark Ages. So, why not let a bunch of visionary filmmakers, both young and old, make whatever the hell they want? It was also a time when these outcasts could make movies about, well, outcasts. As Sam Mendes, whose debut film “American Beauty” won best picture at the Academy Awards the following year, put it: “And if you look across the films of that year, they were stories about outliers: the loners, the people no one pays attention to.”

Raftery does a thorough, appreciative job going through the highs and lows not just in the year of movies but the year in general. He recalls with crystal clarity how such events as the Columbine High School shooting, President Bill Clinton’s scandalous dalliance with Monica Lewinsky and the death of Matthew Shepard affected both the culture and Hollywood.

What’s great about “Best” is how it brings awareness to not just that year’s most noteworthy films (and that includes cult classics “Office Space” and “Election”) but forgotten films that usually seem to be excluded from the conversation. I’m very glad he devoted a chapter to “Three Kings” and “The Limey,” two of my favorite films of that year.

He also gives love to “The Best Man” and “The Wood,” two successful films made by African-American filmmakers, featuring an all-black cast and both starring Taye Diggs. (This chapter reminded me of the way-too-brief time when Diggs was seen as a star-on-the-rise when he was in both the No. 1 and No. 2 movie one week.)

Though Raftery does forget about a film or two here and there (in the chapter on “The Sixth Sense,” I thought for sure he’d bring up “Stir of Echoes,” the other kid-sees-dead-people flick that came out around that time), that’s just me being nitpicky.

“Best. Movie. Year. Ever.” is a fun read and a clear indication that movies that aren’t sequels, reboots, retreads or superhero movies can actually exist at your nearest multiplex — and even make some money.